Advanced TV Herstory w/ Cynthia Bemis Abrams, Part Two

Welcome to eighties TV Ladies, part of the weirding Way Media Network by So Pretty the City. I'm your producer, Melissa Roth, and here are your hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert Adam. Hello, folks, I'm Susan and I'm Sharon, and we are so happy you are listening. Thank you, and we are thrilled to continue the conversation with our guest today. Welcome to the second half of our interview with Cynthia be Miss Abrams.

She is from the podcast Advanced TV Hurstory. Cynthia is a leadership advisor, writer and podcaster who loves TV and the women who made it fabulous. Feel free to start here with part two of our interview because we all live fancy and free, and then you can go back and take in part one, or back it up and start from the beginning. All Right, we were talking about everything because this is fantastic and I'm so excited. I want to talk because we were talking about women in the workplace and I had a question because you had this really cool episode about the four female sitcom construct and we are looking at sitcoms this season and I think it's going to come up so I'm curious about what the four female construct is to you.

And then I looked up a book called Men and Women of the Corporation. So a shout out to my guest for that episode, or those two episodes, doctor Wendy Burns Artelino, who is now at the University of Houston Downtown. She wrote a book and actually pitched me just you know, from her office there in academia, I'd like to be on your podcast and talk about my book. So she, from a very academic perspective, had taken the construct of literature, which is that four women for people, but for women in particular, there is the nafe, you know, sort of the dizzy one, and then there is the the Jezebel, the provocative and the alluring character, and then there's the sort of smart leader, and then there's sort of the stabilizer who holds people together and sort of keeps people from going too far out on the extreme.

And she had done that research and had kind of dug into fan sites at the time, fan billboards or whatever it was back and you know, ten years ago, and had done that analysis across designing women and girl friends. And I kept asking her about facts of Life and she said no because they were too young. Sex in the City, and I think one or two others, and for the most part, I think it's you know, it's it's sort of wrote, it's kind of predictable, but it works. Oh, Golden Girls, and you know you watch Golden Girls, and so each each one of those series did it with a little bit of a different take, a little different context and circumstance, and only gets more sophisticated is as the next writer tries it.

Yeah, it's very interesting, and it's something I think will come up because you know, it's all these women in the workplace or women in the home. Right, that's what Golden Girls is. They're sharing a home. Designing women is they share a workplace. You know, it's a living they share workplace.

Sex in the City is a friendship, which is interesting, right, But it's all these women in this place working together. And so the you're defining those women characters in a particular way, and as a writer, you know, in particular, I think for comedies, you are looking a little bit for those tropes. You know, this is the silly one, this is the you know, the mom or dad, I mean, and then it can cross gender, right, This is you know, the responsible one, This is the irresponsible one. This is the you know, the one who's always you know, trying something new, like whatever it is that you're trying to give characterizations to to create very broad and very you know, we're going to be in conflict and we're going to be you know, in cooperation characters.

But I thought it was interesting in light of that conversation, I found this Bookmen and Women of the Corporation by Rosabeth Moss Canter. It's a nineteen seventy seven study of female employees in the corporate settings, and basically what she came up with was these stereotypes that women were sort of allowed in a male dominated workplace, and it was really more like, be careful that you're going to kind of get set in one of these and it it aligns very much with that. It was basically the sex object, the seductress, the pet or cheerleader, sort of what is that, the mascot, you know, the mother so you're going to be you know, mothering or the iron maiden, otherwise known known as the Hillary Clinton.

Okay, I was going to say it the Julia sugar Baker, but Julia Sugar Baker or the mod you know, like it was just sort of an interesting book that I came across because I was trying to find sort of the four female construct and read more about that, and I thought that was interesting that I found that weird little And I think so much of this and so much of the changing roles of women happened because of two laws, right, the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, which also benefited women as well as people of color and black people, and then Title nine, which was seventy two. I think sounds right that was like discrimination in the workplace and at schools or I was at eighth grade, maybe it was.

The regulation was in seventy two and then implemented in seventy three. Seventy two stick in my mind, but we'll look it up and correct the record later. And actually Title line is just I think it was just regulation. It was like it didn't have to actually go through Congress. I claim that that's one of the only good things that came out of the next an administration that in the era changed.

Yeah. Yeah, And the RA not passing is one of the mistakes of nineteen nineteen eighty, right, which by the way, just for listeners out there, just so you know, the era the Equal Rights Amendment, which may be the simplest amendment ever written, has not been passed. Equal rights regardless of sex does not exist in the United States of America, and should it's all been ratified, it's all been it could be. Title Line is in fact fifty years old this year. I don't know what I haven't been paying attention to, but yeah, the big celebration with kind of Billy Jean King being this very symbol, the symbol of Title Line and the understanding that as I was mentioning women's tennis earlier, we saw women's sports come on TV because finally, an understanding of Title Line is that there needed to be equity in education.

That's really where it was started. That was its greatest impact, was that if there was going to be a boys basketball team and a boys football team and a swim team, that there needed to be three teams available, three team opportunities available for girls as well. And so the very end of the baby boom was the one that while in school, their school experience started to change. I mean, that's part of women's health. Even to understand that women who are older than you know, who were born in the fifties, have a very different experience with exercise and competition.

And that affected me directly because I played soccer at Ayso female soccer, and you hit a certain cap and then it was gone. And when I got to high school, which was well after nineteen seventy two, I was lucky enough to live in a district where the wife of our coach of our Ayso team basically maybe single handedly fought to enact the Title nine enforcement in our Decalb County school district, so that in my ninth grade year they allowed us to have a female soccer team. And so when we had run out of Ayso age wise, which I was about to go Oa because whatever our high school got permission to have a female soccer team, we had to find a coach. And I went to our football coach, Coach Hill had asked him to coach us, and he could not because he was coaching wrestling or gymnastics, I can't remember, and he said, well, you should ask a miss Cult because she was the other science teacher.

Went and she's just started. She was very young, very new, and I went over and said, hi, I would like you to be our coach of soccer, and she said, I don't know anything about soccer, and I said that's okay, and she said okay. And she didn't know anything about soccer, but we did because we had played soccer for five years, my friends and I and so we started our team because we convinced our science teacher to be our coach. And thankfully the male soccer coach was very nice and very helpful and basically taught her a lot too. Ultimately they ended up getting married because it was so sweet.

They had a romance and they got married and we were all so excited and you made it happen and we made it happen. But yeah, that's how I got to play high school soccer. A lot of women made it happen. Listeners. When we these two podcasts look at TV.

Sometimes we focus an awful lot on the drama and the comedies and things, but there is so much more to TV, particularly the experiences in the sixties and seventies and eighties that were so significant that caught everyone's attention, that change society, and so it's easy to focus on the TV series. Some of the most fun to research is some of this other stuff about how it factored into how the Olympics, the Olympic coverage of Olympic women, and who those athletes were who never would have been anything if we hadn't been able to see them and to see them young women with medals around their necks. And it didn't matter if they were American nor Russian or while. It didn't matter if they were Russian, but American or Canadian or Japanese you know, yeah, yeah, or from Brazil.

It just it didn't matter. They were women. It was impactful. I think some of that wouldn't have occurred to me if I hadn't seen Billy Jin King, you know. I mean, I remember women's soccer was in the Olympics for the first time in the Olympics.

That was in Atlanta ninety two, ninety two. Yes, and that was the first time there was women's soccer in the Olympics ninety six, ninety six. I was there. You were there. I was not here.

Was there for the gold medal game. I was there. My mom was there because I'm like, you have to go. I so wanted to get back for those Olympics. My hometown.

I didn't make the Olympics in the LA in nineteen eighty four, and I didn't make the nineteen ninety six Atlanta Olympics, where the first time that women's soccer was in the Olympics. But it was meaningful to me because I had loved soccer and there wasn't any There was no soccer when I got to USC There was no women's soccer at USC, which filled insane. I started that team too, but I didn't get to play on it. It was a long story, took a long time. I went to film school, I couldn't play by the time I got to go as things to do.

One thing so I've been thinking about but since we started doing this podcast is what seems to me that what was going on in the world, the attempts to pass the RAA title nine, other things bringing women more and what women were accomplishing in sports and other endeavors. Television started to pick up on that a little bit and more and more as they kind of went forward with it, and so there was kind of the swelling of putting women forward in television during the eighties. And I'm not sure exactly when it kind of started to turn a little bit, because I think it in some ways it did and has, But that to me really felt that was at the time when I was in college, graduating from college, getting my first job, etc.

And there seemed to be this sense of things are happening, Things are really happening for women by women in the early eighties, and it was exciting. There just seemed to be something in the air about it, and I think some of that was reflected in what we were seeing on television with Scarecrow and Missus King and eventually Cagney and Lacy and Remington Steel, which for me was as a woman who even at that age, knew that the idea of marriage and kids was not in the cards. For me just wasn't something I wanted. I didn't mean that other people who did it there was anything wrong with that. I just knew that for me, I was not necessarily something that was going to happen that I wanted to happen.

So seeing Laura Holt on television being a single woman who may or may not have wanted kids, but right now she had this career she was trying to build, and this company she was trying to build, and that was her focus and she had no problem being in charge except for the people who didn't want her to be in charge because she wasn't a man. So there seemed to be a lot going on in television for women in the eighties and about women in the eighties, and it seemed to be kind of the beginning of that For me during that time, it seemed a lot of possibility. And I realized now so much of that was sitting on the shoulders of the sixties and seventies in a way that I didn't recognize as a kid, right, Like I didn't know that, Like there was all these you know, other breakthrough shows and breakthrough moments in history.

Billy Jing King, I mean, I definitely Billy Jing King broke through for me. I did not follow tennis, but Billy Jing King. You know what's amazing about the Billy Jing King Battle of the Sexes nineteen seventy three for and Bobby Riggs is you can't find that video anywhere really, but there's a bit a movie like two movies about it, right, movies about it. Yes, So either they are using using video that was just that maybe somebody has access to something but it has never really been made available as a replay or you know, bits on YouTube or anything, and it was considered bigger than the Super Bowl in nineteen seventy three. That was huge.

I remember that, and I was not very old at that point, but I remember that huge. That is so interesting. I wonder why it's not available. Why wouldn't it be available, Cynthia, I think it comes back to money. Yeah, whoever owns the rights to it seems to have sold clips to various people who've used it for documentaries or stories or whatever, but they have not for whatever reason.

Maybe somebody just hasn't ponied up the right amount of money to buy the whole thing. So that's just my personal opinion. I know nothing, but because it had to have been bankrolled, the production had to be bankrolled by some company, and maybe that company doesn't even exist anymore. So the idea of doing the legal gymnastics to get to it is just not worth it to anybody. But that's kind of crazy.

But to Sharon's point about why did it seem to peak and then things changed? And money is the next thing the Sharon talks about pretty frequently, and it's true when we think about them graphic that we champion and that is the fact that the baby boom was moving more toward the workforce, that we were approaching a point where there were more women in college than men in college, and that they were then going off to try to have it all and juggle the marriage and the family and the job. I think it was very easy for the networks that were already feeling the challenge from cable TV to say, there's no way, you know, they're not watching TV. We can just go ahead and continue to eke out you know, more magnum p I or you know whatever.

We don't need to expect that much from some of these vehicles. Some of these old forces and women kind of let it be. And then when there were powerful showrunners like lend of Bloodworth Thomason or Terry Louise Fisher, they got to be a little too powerful and it was just as easy to buy them out and send them away, and we didn't know it. Yeah, and then you look at Shanda Rhimes and a Diverney and those are I think David Diaverney's they single handedly created, you know, thirty career for black women, like by just giving them a job to direct a TV show and maybe do their second TV show. And that's amazing.

It takes that. It takes someone going, I'm going to make sure there's a room a seat for you. But is that person or is that group, this tightly knit bonding of Oprah and Felicia Rashan and Debbie Allen and a few more who stay with them, who sort of run interference when necessary, who make the calls when necessary, so that finally they get their chance and they are able to put their very best foot forward and know exactly who they're pitching their stuff too. I just I think there's a very solid sisterhood there that we do not know a fraction of the story about. Fair enough, I think so.

And when Oprah gave her what was it a lifetime recognition speech or whatever at the Golden Globes four or five years ago, I mean I just got I got chills everything she said me to all the sense of war, so love, love, love, And really every time I sort of start thinking about it, I get very optimistic actually that if we as women just continue to support each other and agree to hear somebody out try to help in some way, we are making the opportunities for this next generation. And there are many decades left where we can continue to do this. We just need to really be open to the fact that the youngest generation that's in the workforce needs a lot of help, and we know so much. Yeah, I agree. And speaking of oprah speeches, that any speech in twenty twenty two, Yeah, they're very, very very nice, and you're like, oh my god, where have you been?

Come back? Come back, Oprah, come back all the time, just come on all the day. I'm optimistic. I think, yes, we're seeing, you know, some of the things that Oprah is doing, and Avid to Verney in particular, and I think Shanda Land has also been working very hard to give women lots of opportunities. And I just think there are a lot of other places, and I think there's a generation of women coming along who understand and are getting to a place or in a place where they're able to open those doors and keep that door open behind them and bring those women along with them so that they too can have the opportunity to shine and then bring somebody else along behind them.

I don't know anything specific, but there seemed to be a time when some women were allowed through that door. They maybe were discouraged to bring other women along or didn't understand how important it was to bring those women along, and I'm not sure that as much of that was happening then as there is now, and it just feels different from that standpoint, I think that's true. I think that you didn't know you could invite anyone else into that room if you got in the door, or even if you did, was there a price that you would have to pay, Because again, any of the people making decisions were men, and if you're they were like, what do you mean women? Other women? What about this guy I know that could do this?

Who? And sometimes they didn't have the power the ability to say no. Perhaps, And I think now that I think things in that regard have really begun to shift, much more so than they were in the past. It's not perfect, it's not quite there anymore. I was talking to a friend at dinner last night who, in her job her department, hired somebody to be her boss, who knows nothing about what she does.

Her former direct report said how this guy that they hired as kind of messed things up? And she's sitting there thinking, then, why didn't you promote me? Because I know what I'm doing, and yet you hire this man so there's still that sort of thing that will continue to happen for a variety of reasons. But I think that there is more of an awareness on the women's part and on the men's part that they need to be operating perhaps a little differently. That's my hope.

Yes, I think we will get there someday, not as fast as we would like. However, tell us about your book. You're writing a book, there's actually sort of two books. There's two books. Good, it's too much for one book, and there's like nothing to show.

The first book was Actually it has sat on the shelf and in my head longer, and it would be much simpler to produce if and when I just sit down and start working on it. And that is taking from all of the many of the DVDs that are on my shelf and watching a lot of TV. That there are lots of stories in TV of hashtag me too and consent. So if you if you expand a hashtag me too to be the workplace as well as the school and elsewhere, that it isn't just limited to the workplace, but it's women in life and being put in a power situation where you have no and you have no consent, and there are at least really kind of ten good episodes or story arcs that make it all a little bit more understandable, because sometimes it's hard to teach this in a way to teach consent, because that starts to get oh well, sex education in everything.

But sometimes teaching through storytelling is affective. And so it's it's that it's identifying how to get those episodes or track them down or if nothing else, just sent upsize them as stories. And that one I had sort of pitched, you know, and didn't think anything of it, and then I got a call or an email a couple months ago and it's like, so, or are you really going to ever do something with this, because we're interested, And I'm like, oh my god. And that was we were. We were just like making the decision to move.

So I had to put that one on the shelf. The one that is a little bit more further along in my heart, however, is it's intended to be graph more of a graphic novel, but it's not a novel in terms of non fiction. It's nonfiction and it is nine stories, real life stories of women who we know. It's the working title is unscripted courage women who we know that these stories of them overcoming their fears or overcoming challenges or witnessing the ugliest face of history firsthand, and how that made them stronger, It made them more graceful and more of the legend that we know them to be very powerful. So a few are pulled from the podcast, and some are women more of the entertainment industry in film.

And then in the case of Diana Ross, you know, I've done multiple episodes now on the Diana Ross nineteen eighty three concert in Central Park. I won't go into it, but that is a story that needs to be told. She owns the rights to or she did at one point own the rights to that video of her concert, but the concert story itself needs to be told. It's as important as the Doug Flutie touchdown, or you know, any any great moment in sports history. And then another one from the podcast, which is amazing because it does make you realize that people are paying attention to what you're doing, is that Dinah Shore wrote and sat on a number of occasions that she came from one of the very few Jewish families in Tennessee.

She was born in Tennessee. She was not a natural one, and she's also the first to say that she were a lay on. Was told lose the dark hair and get your nose straightened and teeth fixed and all that. But while she was living in a couple different smaller cities in Tennessee, her father was the only department store. He ran the only department store in town.

And when the ku Klux Klan was having evening parades going by, her father was able to identify, You're going to get chills up up your neck. I get it just saying it. Her father was able to identify who these men were by the shoes that he had sold them. And her career, her career provide opportunity and exposure for people, not just in radio and TV, but then ultimately doing what she did with the LPGA makes her this woefully un celebrated feminist in so many different ways. And it's really hard to track down the information about her because even though she was so big in all of those fields, nobody really paused to collect that information.

There are a couple of biographies out there, but they were from the seventies, you know, when it was a third of it was dedicated to her relationship with Burt Reynolds. Wow. So yeah, I had no idea of most of what you just described about Dinah Shore. Yeah, that's amazing. She's so cool.

She's so cool. It like sometimes I just think if I was sitting, like when I need that moment of strength, I'm sitting in Dinah's you know, little Veranda on the backside of the TV set, you know, the set where she had her talk show, and I'm asking her, you know, what do you think she's wearing like a sharp's letter and she's got the big hair and she's got the iced tea next? Or is she's telling me what to do and I get strength from that? Diana Shore is you're what is it called your familiar? Yeah, she's she's a source.

She she is a source for what is there to lose. And obviously I'm sure she had to play some games and that that is documented. But Lena Horn had to play games and she did not come out nearly as as well with the kind of reputation of being, you know, such a such a strong, powerful positive woman. Lena Horne was a strong, powerful hell raiser and she was unfiltered and she upset many people, and we do not give her the credence the credit. All right, Well, we've got a lot of podcasts to do and a lot of books to write, and uh we do, we do, and and to support others who are thinking about doing a podcast.

This is the equivalent to bank. I own all of the ink that I when I pull up the microphone. I own this show. I own what I stand for, I own what I research. I'll tell you how I got that information I usually do at the end of you my notes and everything.

I'm just here to witness what I think I understand happen, try to connect it to what we've seen on TV or what we understand today. Nobody is paying for No. I do not do advertising. I don't accept sponsorships. It's all just me, and that in and of itself is powerful because it means I will never buckle.

Nobody can ever say you can't say that. Wow, that's awesome. That's awesome as it should be. Well, it's been such a pleasure. We have three questions now we wrap with three questions.

So what is and we've named several of them. What is the eighties TV show that resonated with you at the time or resonates today, especially if it was ladies driven. I will say Cagney and Lacy is far and away comfort food. It is so well done. There are so many, so many great episodes that you just feel their grown breaking nature and sharing.

Glass and Tinne daily continue to this day to just be inspiring and willing to talk about just not only the experience but life in general. They are such role modes. Absolutely same here and what are some favorite twenty first century female driven TV shows modern day TV that you are enjoying or have liked. I have to say Grayson Frankie is pretty significant to me. The poor female trope of women characters in a sitcom Hot in Cleveland.

I love Hot in Cleveland as much as I love designing women. And I'm kind of corny, but I like Bones. You know, there's nothing like a good formula, and I thought that Emily de Chanelle was just woefully again. You know, it's well, where does the show end up getting distributed to? And Bones was never on ABC, NBC or CBS, nor was Hot in Cleveland.

Some of the very best TV we will have seen in the last two decades came through either you know, quirky quirky standard cable or streaming streaming, yeah, or or PBS because you know, there was the Downton Nabby years were but again you know he that was not generated by a woman, but those were very strong women characters. Yes, yeah, yeah, all right. And then, um, what is one of the moments in your life where you felt you might be in a movie or a TV show where it felt scripted or it was so particularly beautiful or heroic or just absurd. Oh, these aren't munies, are like really deep, deep memories. Um.

I worked for a United States senator here in Minnesota, and there were a number of moments which were kind of high profile and invariably like something needed to get done, and there were reporters and you know, every the world was watching, and all of a sudden, everyone just looked at me and it was like, oh, you go do it. You know. So I have a number of very slow motion memories that sort of feel like, well, you know, that could have been out of It really wasn't out a West Wing necessarily, but yeah it could have been. Yeah. A number of different professional experiences come because you also you work in leadership and you work in we didn't even cover this.

I taught leadership as an adjunct professor at a state university. It was kind of curriculum that I developed for honors kids, honors students at the undergraduate level and have a master's degree in organizational leadership. And then my career itself was in public relations, usually small shops, which invariably went to crisis crisis communication and stuff like that, executive handholding and that I mean I was. I wrote a lot, certainly in my career, but then really when I started doing the podcast, I found myself writing so much and then cleaning it up, and then really learning how to not only write for script because many of my episodes are truly scripted, and that's partly so that I can stay focused and crisp, but then writing for the Internet and understanding how to tweet tweet something out and to write it for Facebook or to even just write about it on my website TV herstory, Dad, come because you've really get about two sentences and you and show notes and things like that.

Clean it up, use a strong verb, you know, be as tight as you possibly can. That's fantastic. It has been such a pleasure to have you on today and to dive deep and dark with you and have some fun and also have a lot of fun. And I'm I'm so excited to know you and to know Advanced TV Herstory. I highly recommend it to all our listeners.

I think you will enjoy it. If you're enjoying us, you will definitely enjoy Advanced TV Herstory absolutely all right. And I wish you too or your team actually the best with regard to this upcoming season, which sounds fascinating and that you are not just going off of what one might expect to be. The shows or the series that you guys are working at and leaven the guests that you're bringing forward to represent some of those series aren't what you would expect, so you are definitely paving ground that nobody else has brought to the podcast world. That's super important.

There's plenty of work out there for all of us to do, and I'm grateful that you ladies people are holding down the eighties because there's just so much and you can't say it enough times and you can't celebrate it enough. All of this great work needs to be brought forward articulated for those who have never seen it. Fingers pointed toward how to be able to see it. Yeah, because the work was so great then, or so important to help everybody understand where we are twenty twenty two. So thank you for the work you're going.

Thank you. Oh my gosh ah oh love fast. Okay, all right, thank you so much. Good night, everybody, take care yay. Hey, it's David here and this is Rob.

We are the hosts of a brand new podcast called Totally Eighties and Nineties Recall. If you love all things eighties and nineties, from music and movies to television and pop culture, then this is the podcast for you. Join two gen X dudes every week as we revisit and discuss all of our favorite things from when we grew up in the eighties and nineties for a fun and nostalgic look back at two of the best decades. So come and listen for yourself. We promise you'll have a great time, and then go subscribe to Totally Eighties and Nineties Recall on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For our audioography today, the books are Men and Women of the Corporation by Rosabeth Moss Cantor and the one Cynthia talks about on her podcast TV Female four and their Fans by Windy Burns Ardolino. You can find Cynthia on Twitter at tv Hearstry. You can also go to her website, Cynthia Bemis Abrahams dot com. We're heading into Pride Month and it's important to acknowledge the LGBTQ plus community, especially the trans community. There's an unprecedented number of attacks and anti trans bills and laws being passed in so many states across the country, trying to outlaw people's rights to be and exist.

We are outraged at these attacks on the queer community and trans community. We stand in solidarity with transfolks and their families. Here are a few resources that can help. At ACLU dot org, you can find a map tracking the anti LGBTQ plus legislation in different states and across the country. We urge you to find out what's happening in your state and to take action to protect people, privacy and healthcare for all.

Teen Vogue has a list of you can be in support with your trans community. In Texas, you can go to TX trans Kids dot org. To help. In the South, you can go to Southern Equality dot org. Seventy five percent of transgender youth in the South.

Right now live in a state where a ban on gender affirming care has been passed. So for June, we are celebrating Pride Month with some very special podcast episodes about the history of LGBTQ plus representation and television. I'm so excited for our next episode, our next two episodes. That's right, the next two are going to be with Matt Baum and Rainbow Remix. Matt Baum is an expert on queer activism and representation in pop culture, especially television.

He has a book that just came out that you're going to want to get. It's called Hi Honey, I'm Homo. It's about the history of queer representation and sitcoms, and it's available now. Links will be on our website and in our description. In this episode's in memorium section, we'd like to acknowledge the following.

Tina Turner, the icon, the legend, the musician and actress, the most successful female rock artist ever, seven time Grammy winner, so many songs, music videos from the eighties from Private Dancer. We don't need another hero. I just I was very sad. I was stunned. I was not aware that she was ill, so it came out of the blue anyway, and I want to shout her out as an actress in Tommy and of course in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

She's fantastic and she should have done more acting in all her spare time. We'd also like to remember Jacqueline Zeeman, who appeared in nine hundred and forty episodes of General Hospital as Bobby Spencer and before that on One Life to Live. As a longtime viewer of General Hospital, I'll never forget her bad girl persona back in the day when she first joined hospital to some classic and truly memorable storylines that she appeared in and was integral too. She definitely will be missed, and I will say in the eighties, General Hospital broke through the soap opera sort of category a little bit. It became bigger than the soap opera for me, Like I think it's sort of like there, so there was the soap opera world and then suddenly it was the General Hospital sort of broke through anyway.

Eileen Saki was the third and longest actress to play the role of local bar owner Rosie in Mash. She was also in Chips Greatest American Hero, Give Me a Break, and in the movie Splash and History of the World Part One, amongst many others. Not too long ago, she did a podcast interview with mash Matters podcast Check it out. Garn Stevens was an actress and writer on many eighties TV shows and movies. During the seventies, she appeared on shows like Phyllis All in the Family Barney Miller.

She was also on Family Ties, Charlie's Angels, and was a writer on shows like Trapper, John m d and Saint Elsewhere. I thought that was so interesting that she was both a writer and an actress. Yeah, for those shows. Barbara Byrne, who was probably most famous for being in Amadeus the Movie, but she also did a number of TV movies in guest performances on TV series in the eighties. Carol Locatel, actress from Atlanta, Georgia, starred in the sixties on TV and movies from The Flying Nun all the way up to Shameless in two nineteen.

Her last credit was in twenty twenty one. Elizabeth Hubbard was an actress in two thousand, seven hundred and forty one episodes of the Doctors and over seventeen hundred episodes of As the World Turns. I know her primarily from As a World Turns. She was awesome. She's awesome.

Judy Farrell a seventies and eighties actress who became a TV writer in the eighties and beyond. She was married to Mike Farrell of mash Fame for twenty years. Nika Garland was Emmy Award winning producer who worked for twenty two years on General Hospital. Writer Rita Latkin. She was a creator of The Rookies and Flamingo Road and was a writer on The Mod Squad, The Doctors, and Dynasty.

I didn't know she had created the Rookies for some reason. That's amazing. Then there's a great story about that, but we'll have to talk about that some other time. Emily Marshall who was a writer and producer on Designing Women, New Heart, Rhoda, and w Kerp in Cincinnati, among others. Sharon Acker was an actress on so many shows in the seventies and eighties like Executive Suite, Simon and Simon Murder.

She wrote and Texas, we will miss you and we remember you. Thank you Eighties TV ladies, Thank you for listening to Eighties TV Ladies. We are so excited to have you back for season two. We love hearing from you. Send us your thoughts questions at our website Eighties tv ladies dot com that's eight zero s t v ladies dot com.

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Thanks for listening so pretty to the city